THE SAME WORD FOR PENIS AND PROBLEM.

(from At Home With the Pumpkin King)

About my brother Thom it is best to say as little as possible. Almost anything that can be said about Thom is obscene. And why talk about him, when he talks so much about himself? Oh no, my brother Thom is not shy, not even when we wish he would be, when anyone else would be at least discreet, but not our Thom, not even at the dinner table or near surveillance cameras, not on the Sabbath, not even on his dates in court.

No, Thom always has to pipe up and insist that the panicked tortoise does takes off, the anxious cloud evaporates, whenever he’s in the middle of an orgy.

Thom! Not any orgy, of course. It has to be first-rate, inclusive of all orifices, not neglecting the nipples, with him doing everything and everything being done to him, with no fewer than 5 people in all genders and everyone has to be hot or well-hung or there has to be something about them anyway--then, Thom says, that tortoise entirely vanishes.

Such occasions are difficult to arrange. (Forgive me when I tell you things you already know.) There are complications always. Conservative wives come home early. No, no, that’s not lubricant, that’s mousse! Gunshots are fired. Someone shouts Ride ‘em cowboy! and so-and-so, you know, cannot stop giggling. And what’s the chance a number of cocks will perform as required at once? Still, Thom swears it has been known to happen, that perfect orgy, and he swears that he was happy, then.

In between perfect orgies, Thom spends three to five years in chat-rooms, dead bored and buried in self-disgust, exaggerating the size of his prick by two inches at least.

I am sorry if I have said too much. My propriety’s been blasted by living too long with Thom. Our appalling Thom: obscenity for all occasions. I myself am perverse only by association.
Of course I have penis problems of my own. (Somewhere--don’t you think--there’s got to be a culture that uses one same word for penis and for problem.) Unlike Thom, whose penis only garners fines, doctor’s appointments and internet appearances, my penis makes me money. My penis has made me a rich man. Yes, I am living the American Dream.

Not the old American Dream. The new one.

I wanted to be a success. Of course I did. I wanted to strive, to achieve. Then I discovered I’d have to work. Forty hours a week or more. Which seems excessive. And wasteful. Is life so long that we can afford to spend so much time working? Especially those of us who like to read.
My life was over, I thought. No chance for it--I had to work. Then opportunity knocked. I needed a new doorknob, so I went to the local home goods store, which of course was bigger than Greenland on an old map. And I was trying to choose the best doorknob. Of the thirty-nine available doorknobs. I was tired and distracted. What do I know about doorknobs? What in my life has prepared me for choices of this magnitude?

It was then that I was visited by a very American miracle.

A miracle which was the marvelous and improbable conjunction of the stars above and certain events down below: a superstore, a speeding forklift, a selection of doorknobs, a clerk on Ativan, and tired, distracted, near-sighted me.

I went into HomePlus with five dollars. After seven weeks in the hospital I came out with a slight but persistent limp and a penis that does function, no matter how odd it looks, and 1.75 million dollars to support myself in idleness and non-achievement. America! Never mind blindness and amputation: there’s no jury in America that won’t approve a million dollars extra for a penis injury.

You may want to keep this in mind.

As I was saying, we all have our strategies. Let’s continue this discussion and I promise I won’t mention penises again for several pages.